


Eight is Enough

by tisfan



Series: The Fish Tank and other Creature AUs [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, Octo-Bucky, Seahorse tony, So Many Kids, and their kids - Freeform, mer-lobster steve, mermaid au, sam-wilson Manta Ray
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-01-28 23:02:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12617524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: When Steve gets stuck in a lobster trap, it's up to Tony and his tool-using abilities to save the day.Featuring all of Tony and Bucky's merbabies.Especially Jaime, as the world's most annoying hairclip.Now with Art from Monobuu (see bottom and notes)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monobuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monobuu/gifts).



> A continuation of this work, [Eight Arms to Hold You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11220891/chapters/25071117)
> 
> Okay, hilarious story time; After I wrote Eight Ways to a Sunny Day, Monobuu (my giftee) drew me pictures of Tony and Bucky's little merbabies... and then I got her as my giftee for this exchange! with her requests for ALL THE MERMAID FIC...
> 
> so, this story comes full circle and I have now included her art here for you to enjoy!

The sea was warm enough, and food supplies were low.

As an octo-mer, Bucky was only used to scavenging enough food for himself, but several weeks with his pregnant mate had given him more responsibility. And then there were the spawnlings. And _tides_ , they ate a lot!

Steve readily agreed to search the waters for edibles -- Bucky and Tony (and all six of their babies) were living in his cavern, the least Bucky could do was help him hunt and forage -- and they went out.

Tony sulked about it; being confined to the dark cavern was getting on his nerves. There was nothing to be done, though. As large a group as they were, together, they’d attract predators.

“You can go next time, gorgeous,” Bucky reassured his mate. “And I’ll stay home with these little guppies.”

Tony narrowed his eyes. “You’re patronizing me,” he accused. “You think I can’t handle it?”

Bucky chewed his lip for a moment, trying not to say the wrong thing. Tony had gotten as bent as a fishhook over the idea that Bucky was trying to _protect_ him. Which was, to some degree, absolutely true. He cupped his hand to Tony’s jaw. “I’m still adjustin’ to this whole mates thing, Tony,” he said. “Let me take care of this? I owe you for leavin’ you alone for most of your pregnancy.”

Tony blew a spurt of water at him. “That excuse is only gonna hold air for so long, before I get crabby.”

“Don’t do that,” Bucky said. “That’s Steve’s job.”

The corners of Tony’s mouth twitched as he tried to avoid smiling at Bucky’s stupid joke, and Bucky knew he’d won the argument this time. Tony was right, though. It was only going to be so long before Bucky was going to have to loosen the nets and let Tony swim free. Even if the whole idea of Tony being out and vulnerable made Bucky cower inside with terror.

“Next time,” Tony said, shoving the basket at Bucky. “Next time, I’m going, and you can’t stop me.”

Several of Bucky’s arms darted out, the sensitive suckered undersides grabbing hold of Tony’s skin, pulling him closer. Tony pouted again, turning his head away, but he couldn’t resist, and eventually smiled up into Bucky’s eyes. “Love you, starfish,” Bucky said. “You’re the most precious thing in the whole ocean, okay?”

“You think I don’t feel the same way?” Tony kissed him, a brief touch of lip, with the faintest hint of Tony’s tongue over his bottom lip. “I almost lost you before. And things are different now. I have to protect the one thing that I can't live without. That's you.”

“We can protect each other,” Bucky promised. “But right now, I’m going out with Steve, and you’re staying here with the tadpoles.”

Tony grumbled. “They’re not amphibians, for sand’s sake.”

“No,” Bucky agreed. “What they are is a half-dozen _troublemakers_.”

Tony scoffed, then kissed him again, more seriously. Seriously enough that Bucky considered putting off the foraging trip and taking his mate to the floor in their little side cavern.

Except by that time, RiRi and the twins, Win and Ward, were all bickering about whose string of shells that was, and _Daaaaaaaaaaaaad, tell her it’s ours!_ While Tony was distracted with sibling rivalry, Bucky snatched up the baskets and was out the cavern mouth before Tony could argue the point any further.

Bucky kissed Peter and ruffled his hair on the way out. Winnie was stacking flat stones in a little mating shelter, and Jaime was, as usual, nowhere to be seen. Jaime had figured out the octo-mer’s best defense early; camouflaging himself. His favorite thing was to blend into the walls or the ceiling and then pounce on an unsuspecting adult.

“I’ll be back soon,” he told his brood, and then joined Steve, who was humming thoughtfully while he waited for Bucky to solve his domestic crises.

***

So, naturally, they were a good distance away from the cavern when Bucky came across a clam bed. Plucking up an armful, he went to load them in the basket.

“ _Surprise_!” Jaime, all red-armed and gleeful, was tucked into the bottom of the basket. Because of course he was.

Bucky scowled, bending to the ocean floor to recover the dozen clams that he’d dropped before they scuttled away. “Currents, child! You’re supposed t’ stay in the cave!”

“I’s bored,” Jaime said. He crawled out of the basket, up Bucky’s torso and perched on his head, arms coiling and curling through Bucky’s hair like the world’s most annoying hat.

“Your dad is going to peel your hide for scarin’ him,” Bucky predicted. Wasn’t much they could do about it now; taking the time to bring Jaime back to the cavern would cost them the daylight and there were other mouths at home to feed.

Jaime cheerfully took that threat to mean that _Bucky_ was not going to peel and eat him like a shrimp, which was probably true and proceeded to work on his new task as hair ornament, while commenting non-stop, on all the sights around them. Pointed out kelp forests and fiddler crabs, wondered if a huge shadow was a whale (it was probably a man-thing, one of their floating things they used to travel around because the stupid creatures couldn’t swim hardly at all) and snacked on whatever bits and pieces of foraging Bucky would pass up to him.

“Oh, smelt,” Steve said, his massive tail curling and pushing him forward in quick, eager jolts.

“What?” Bucky tried to snag his son up again. Jaime crossed his upper arms over his narrow chest, lower arms curling tightly around the rock he was exploring. He stretched out, and then snapped back into place, chortling gleefully. “Young fry, you let go of that right now.”

Jaime made a show of releasing one arm at a time, and whenever he thought his father wasn’t looking, he’d wrap a previously free arm back around the rock.

“Smelt,” Steve said, just on the other side of the reef formation. “It’s a man-thing. You know they don’t have much in the way of teeth, so they do all sorts of strange things to their food.”

Bucky knew. He’d spent time on land, observing man-folk at a distance. They had a strange, orange not-water that they put their food on, until it was soft and fragrant. Bucky’d stolen some of their food before, a strange, mealy substance they called _bread._ That wasn’t very tasty, but they had a sort of thick gooey stuff that they smeared over their bread and Bucky had found that tasty. The man-thing container it had been in was fascinating, as well. The top twisted on and off, and Bucky had played with it for days until he had let it go in his sleep one night and a current took it away.

“Is smelt like _nutbutter_?” Because if Steve had found some of that, Bucky might have to make a bargain to have more than his share of the take.

“It’s fish, I think. Fixed somehow. Mashed up and flavored with air-plants.” Steve said. He grunted a few times. “It’s in… it’s in a _thing_. I can’t… quite… reach it.”

“Give me a minute to get my son to stop trying to be part of the ocean floor and I’ll snag it for you,” Bucky said. He could stretch and squish a lot further than any crustacean. The whole shell thing made for some--

“Oh, sand and shells,” Steve swore. “I’m stuck.”

“Let go, _now_ ,” Bucky told his son. Jaime made a face, but did as he was told, and Bucky deposited the fry on his shoulder and braced for a stranglehold around his neck by at least four arms, the little suckers on the underside a sharp pinch against his skin.

“What in the seven seas is that thing?” Bucky stared.

Steve was trapped in some sort of… man-thing. Coils of their special made kelp formed a net, almost like whirlpool. Beyond the net, a thing.  A… Bucky blinked, trying to understand what he was looking at. Rounded on top, flat on the bottom, it was like a cave that wasn't a cave and Steve was inside it. He could barely turn around in the little space and the top of it pushed him  down; he couldn’t straighten up.

Steve grumbled. “It’s a lobster trap,” he said, hand and pincer grasping at the slats that made up the structure. “I’ve seen them before, for the little ones. The not-thinkers that are like me.”

“What’s it for?”

Bucky didn’t understand man-things, not much. Most of them that made their way to the ocean floor were rotten and broken, although he’d managed to make a few of them work, and Tony’s woven baskets were useful, so he imagined other man-things might be useful. But they never threw things to the ocean floor that they wanted. Not usually.

Steve was clinging to the slats now, eyes wide and desperate. “The man-folk, they, well, they eat non-thinkers, just like we do.”

“This is too big,” Bucky said. “You’re nearly as large as they are, what do they think they can do, eat you like they’re Ten Rings?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “You’ve gotta get me out of it, Buck.”

***

Tony was just getting ready to start panicking about the lack of Jaime in the cavern when the fry himself came squirting into the room, a tiny ink cloud behind him. “Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!” Since Jaime came in from outside the cavern and he was breathing hard, gills working in overdrive, Tony decided panic was absolutely and utterly called for, because the seas only knew where Jaime had been.

Calm child first, panic later.

“Jaime, while I’m quite sure the fish you saw outside was utterly fascinating,” Tony said, full on lecture mode, “what have we talked about you leaving the cavern without permission?” Not, necessarily, that Tony blamed the poor fry. The cavern was enclosed and boring, but until Tony and Bucky had a safer place to raise their kids, cavern life chose them.

“Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaad,” Jaime repeated, this time exasperated that he was in trouble. Because he was in trouble, Jaime was almost always in trouble.

“Jaime, honey, sweethearts,” Tony said, reaching out, and Jaime grabbed hold of him with all of his arms, clinging desperately. “What… what is it?”

“Uncle Steve,” Jaime said. He unwrapped one arm from Tony’s wrist to ball the tip end up and stick it in his mouth, mumbling around the obstacle in a rattle of words that made no sense at all.

Tony gently removed the arm from Jaime’s mouth. “What have we said about sucking on your arm?”

“Not to,” Jaime sulked.

“That’s right. The end of your arm will get all bent out of shape, and you might need that for something, later,” Tony said.

“But Daaaaaad,” Jaime protested. “This is important!”

“So is not chewing on your arm, honey,” Tony said. “Take  deep breath, and then tell me.”

Jaime made a huge, exaggerated deal out of sucking water and passing it over his gills, chest heaving with the effort. “ _There_. Can I tell you now?”

“Go ahead.”

“Uncle Steve is trapped in a man thing and Father says he needs you and your smart brain right now, chum!”

“He shouldn’t swear around you,” Tony said, absently. “What sort of man thing? How far away? How do you know?”

“I was in the basket,” Jaime explained, arm sneaking back to end up in his mouth.

Tony’s chest squeezed unpleasantly. “We’re going to have a long talk about you sneaking out, young fry.”

“I’s helpin’,” Jaime protested.

“And we’re very grateful, but that doesn't mean you’re not still in trouble.”

“Daaaaad!”

“You keep saying that, and yet I remain unmoved by your plight,” Tony said. “Winnie?”

His oldest daughter, who happened to be slightly more mature, as well, appeared. She grabbed hold of Jaime’s arm without even thinking about it, tugging it away from his mouth again. “Yes, Dad?”

“I have to go help your Uncle Steve,” Tony said. He was already picking through his assortment of tools, both that he’d crafted on his own and that he’d salvaged from various man-places, their floating homes that didn’t float anymore were a treasure trove of useful items, and packing them in a basket. “I need you to watch all your brothers and sister. Except for Jaime. Much as it pains me to admit it, I need him to show me the way.” Tony hoped the little fry could show him the way. The ocean was pretty big.

Jaime, made a little fist pump with one upper arm and three of his lower arms, but wisely did not shout with glee or Tony might have been forced to change his mind.

“Peter, Win, Ward, RiRi,” Tony called out. “You four behave for your sister. This is important. And--” he didn’t want to say it, but it had to be said. The ocean could be very, very dangerous “--if your father and I aren’t back by light tomorrow, I want you to swim as fast as you can and get to your Uncle Rhodey and Aunt Pepper, okay? They’ll take care of you until we can get back. You got me?”

“We got you, Dad,” Peter said. The little colt swam around in a circle, obviously aggravated, until Win grabbed him and tugged him into a comforting hug between multiple arms, some of which Tony thought belonged to his twin. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?” The little pout made an appearance.

“Yes, I’ll be fine,” Tony said. “I’m always fine, you know that. I just want to make sure that you all are taken care of in case something happens.”

“Nothing’s gonna happen,” RiRi said, crossing her arms petulantly.”You won’t let it.”

“That’s right, I won’t,” Tony promised, completely aware that he was lying, but what else could he do? His children had already heard about him living through most of his pregnancy without his mate until Bucky found him again, and the desperate trek away from the mating shelter with Ten Rings right behind him, and Steve had been eager to throw tales of Bucky’s heroism against Hydra, back when he was younger. Their kids expected that both of them were some kind of superheroes or something.

“Back soon?” Ward begged, peeking out behind his brothers, shy as always.

“Yeah, soon as I can,” Tony said. “Come on Jaime. The faster we can get started, the sooner we’ll be done.”

Jaime nodded, wrapping his arms around Tony’s back and neck, grabbing on. “This way!” He waved one red-stretchy arm around.

“I think I can get out of the cavern without your assistance,” Tony said.

“I’s _helping_!” Jaime protested again.

“Is that what you’re calling it?” Tony snarked. He grabbed his basket of tools and strapped it over his shoulder. Leaving the cavern, Tony squinted up at the surface, so far away. The sunlight trickled down into the depths, but it was already fading. They didn’t have much time.

Jaime was shockingly good with landmarks and directions, pointing out kelp forests they’d passed and mentioning the school of fish he’d seen that were still circling, getting every bit of algae off a rock formation.

“Oh, oh, grab those, Jaime, hurry,” Tony said, spotting a cluster of ctenophores, distant cousins to jellyfish that used cilla to move themselves around the water. They also, Tony remembered, would glow, casting an eerie blue light around them. They used it to frighten prey and to attract mates, but Tony thought they might be good for helping him examine whatever trap held Steve, if they ran out of daylight.

Jaime helped him capture a good half dozen of the woobly creatures and stuffed them into Tony’s tool basket. He wasn’t sure how to make them stay, once they got where they were going, but he’d cross that chasm when he got there.

Turned out to be easier than he’d expected; the man-thing that held Steve pinned down was large enough that once Bucky could be made to understand what Tony needed, they shoved the ctenophores into the trap, along with Steve.

“Don’t eat those,” Tony said, examining the structure. “Just shake ‘em up once in a while, so I can see. Jaime, stay with your father, I need to concentrate now.”

Before Tony had taken a wholly unusual mate, he’d been a crafter, making shell and bone bracelets and pendants, along with hunting tools, and sometimes scavenging and working with man-things.

“What is that?” Bucky peered at the tool over Tony’s shoulder, Jaime perched on his father’s head, arms twined in Bucky’s thick hair.

“A dinglehopper,” Tony said, absently. He didn’t actually know _what_ it was, just what it did. The name served as well as any, Tony guessed. The things that men made were unusually strong for as thin as they were. He pushed the narrower end of the dinglehopper between the slats and the rounded poles that made up the frame and pushed, using it to try to lever the two pieces apart. Sometimes that worked.

The two pieces of hard plant separated a little. A very little.

“Here,” Tony said, pushing Bucky into his spot. “Pry at this, I’ll see if I can get the other side. Pop both sides off at once. Two or three, and Steve can probably get his claw in, that’ll help.”

They worked it, Tony using a longer, thicker stem-like tool to peel off the slat. They had two broken off and were working on a third when the whole structure gave a mighty lurch and started scraping across the ocean floor, yanked by invisible forces.

No… not invisible. There was a braid of man-kelp, bound to one end of the structure, and something on the other end was hauling Steve up.

“Chum!” Tony swore. He dove for his basket of tools, searching. One of the pieces he had was good for that sort of thing; a thick rod with a sharp side and a handle that made it easier to hold. “Got it. Gimme a push, we need to catch it!”

He grabbed Tony ‘round the waist and was off. Bucky swam a lot faster than Tony did, arms coiling and carrying them rapidly across the sands. Jaime let go with three of his arms, letting them zip along behind, yelling “wheeeee!” as they went. Tony was a little breathless by the time they caught up with the trap; he wasn’t used to speeding through the water like that.

Tony wrapped his tail tight around the man-kelp line and hacked at it with the sharp tool. A few of the weavings snapped, but not enough, not nearly enough. The drag was slow, at least, a few feet at a time. Tony grumbled and started rubbing the sharp side against the line, abrading it. Bits of fiber chewed off and floated away. Steve was mashed in the bottom of the trap, the biolums angrily blinking around him. Poor things. They’d die if the trap got too close to the air, they weren’t surface creatures at all.

Bucky was above him, clinging to the line; several of Tony’s tools in his hands, one tight in his fingers, the others gripped by curling arms. Unlike Tony, Bucky could breathe air, at least for a while, and he was ready to fight the man-folk to save his friends. Tony… he’d heard what man-things could do, with their weapons and tools. Having Bucky risk himself like that?

Tony chopped harder at the line, cutting a few precious threads at a time.

“Come on, come on,” Tony gritted through his teeth.

“Go Dad, go!” Jaime was waving around a few handfuls of the snapped fibers in his excitement. Of course he was excited, it hadn’t occurred to Tony and Bucky’s son that someone might get hurt. Tony swallowed a sudden ache in his throat. He wished for a long moment, that he didn’t know that mers could get hurt.

As it was… Tony hacked at the line again and it snapped.

The kelp-line rebounded, dragging Bucky along with it, twisting and catching at his arms.

“Bucky!” Steve stretched out his hand as the trap went down and Bucky went up, screaming for his friend.

There was a sickening thud as Bucky’s body struck the underside of the man-folk’s floating structure.

Tony might not swim very fast, but he could compute trajectory pretty well. He chugged along, getting under Bucky’s falling body; there was blood blossoming in the water, a sickening trail of it as Bucky sank.

Below, on the ocean floor, the trap landed with a crunch, scattering sand and rocks and bits of man-thing everywhere. Steve emerged from the wreckage, battered and bruising and angry, but alive. The biolums muttered crossly to themselves and skulked away into the darkness, glowing fitfully.

Tony caught Bucky as he sank, swimming down to the safety of the ocean floor, tucking his injured mate against him as they sheltered on the lee side of the coral reef.

Bucky blinked a few times and jerked back, terrified.

“Hey, hey, no, it’s me, pal,” Steve said, petting at Bucky’s hair. “I thought you were dead.”

“Steve?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky squinted through the cloudy water. “I thought you were smaller.”

Steve chuckled. “He’s fine. Just bumped his head a bit.”

Tony glared. That was his mate that Steve was making fun of. Tony patted Bucky down, feeling for breaks or damage, checking each one of his remaining arms. “You’re okay. You’re okay,” he said, over and over, until he wasn’t sure who he was trying to reassure.

“We’re all fine,” Steve said. “Just a little adventure.”

“Tony,” Bucky said, his voice deep with relief.

“Yeah, my turn to do the saving this time, you’ve been sharking that job for a while now,” Tony complained. “Come on, we should go home.”

Bucky scowled. “We lost the food, thanks to Mr-I-want-man-food here.”

“No, we didn’t,” Jaime said. “I know where the basket is!”

“Do you?” Tony asked. Oceans, Jaime was going to be insufferable. And even harder to corral than usual.

“Uh-huh.” He pointed.

Tony didn’t see the basket. What he saw was an extremely irate pufferfish, all blown up.

And bound with a loop of kelp to something.

“I tied it to the basket, to mark our spot,” Jaime declared.

“That… that right there? That’s _your_ son,” Bucky said. “Entirely your fault, Tony.”

“I think I can live with that.”

 

  


 


	2. Two, Four, Six, Eight, Who do We Appreciate?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An afternoon's outing, and introducing Sam, the Manta-Mer...

Bucky folded two sets of his arms together, which honestly, made him look more like he was wearing a man-thing around his waist instead of giving him a fatherly, scolding attitude, but Tony made up for it by glowering at their cluster of offspring.

Or, tried. Given that Peter was still chasing a sea sapphire around their cave and Jaime was perched in Bucky’s hair, trying desperately to braid it, and RiRi was digging in the sand, Tony wasn’t sure how well anyone’s efforts were going. The sea sapphire disappeared again and Peter smashed himself nose-first into the cave wall, trying to startle it. “Ow.”

“Peter!” Bucky coiled an arm around their son and deposited him in the middle of the twins. “Leave it be, you can’t possibly be hungry again already.”

“It’s vinsible!” Peter complained.

“Invisible,” his sister, RiRi, corrected. “I don’t know what vinsible means. Probably nothing, just a made up word.”

“Or his baby-pronunciation,” Ward said. Ward was the oldest of the boys -- all of about six minutes or so, as far as anyone could tell, although Tony’s memory of the traumatic birthing period was a little scattered, really. He mostly just remembered that the girls were oldest and that Peter was the baby.

Peter had to then be discouraged from pouncing on Ward and squeezing all of Ward’s arms together with a powerful grip. A seahorse tail, Tony had discovered, was more than a match for certain octo-kids, when they all got up to shenanigans.

“RiRi is right,” Bucky said, gently. “The word is invisible. Invincible means you can’t defeat it, which might also be true for sea sapphires. I’m not sure if vincible is a word or not. And Ward, be nice to your brother.”

“Why? I got two more, he’s a spare,” Ward said.

“There are no spares in this household,” Tony declared. He picked Ward up and hugged him with his tail, keeping the boy from pouncing on Peter when Peter stuck out his tongue and made a face.

“So, before I was interrupted,” Bucky continued. “We are all going over to see Uncle Rhodey and Aunt Pepper--”

“An’ Caro an’ Kamala!” Winnie piped up, because of course she did. Caro was her best friend in the whole ocean -- her emphasis, not Tony’s.

“Yes, and Carol and Kamala,” Bucky said. “Uncle Steve will be here soon, he’s going to swim with us.” And stop by Peggy’s little dwelling while Tony and Bucky’s school of fry were visiting, but that wasn’t important for the kids. They didn’t much care about the ongoing, but glacially paced courtship between one lobster-mer and the ladycrab he’d decided to woo. Quite frankly, Tony thought that Captain Crustacean was the king of waiting too long and that Peggy was going to accept another offer, if any came by in the next, oh, seventy years or so.

“And while we’re on the journey, you six are going to behave,” Tony said, like there was no doubt that it would happen. Who knew, miracles could occur. “I don’t want anyone swimming out of range, or chasing off after stray fish, or pushing, punching, touching, or even hugging each other.”

All of his offspring gave Tony incredulous looks, as if hugging was something they needed to be told not to do. Like they were ever going to hug each other on purpose. Well, Win wasn’t glaring. He was pretty well known for hugging all over his brothers, sisters, and fathers without much provocation. He was like the octo-version of a jellyfish, constantly all tangled up in the others. But Win was special and all of his siblings adored him.

“Since we’re all agreed on that, grab your bags, get to the opening and sound off,” Bucky instructed.

“You’re doing very well,” Tony said, sotto voce. “I might even mistake you for the mer in charge.”

“Behave,” Bucky said, and he reached out with one arm to swat Tony’s ass.

“Ow!” Tony yelped, rubbing at the curve of his tail. It was very sensitive there.

Bucky reeled him in, wrapping multiple limbs around him and rubbing at the sore spot with the palm of his hand. “Aww… I don’t have time to kiss it and make it better.”

“You are an evil, wicked mer, and I don’t even know why I like you.”

Winnie, who had managed to grab hold of Bucky’s stump and was hanging off it with most of her arms -- her favorite game, pretending to be Bucky’s missing arm and “helping” him do the cave-chores and sometimes a little foraging -- pouted. “You don’t like us?”

“He’s playing, you gangly little thing,” Bucky told her. “What do you think, Tony? Do I need a bracelet for this wrist?” He waved his stump around, with Winnie clinging and giggling and squealing as she swished through the water.

“Sure,” Tony said, and he went to one of the many baskets that adorned their cave and selected a braid of bright red sea reeds. With a deft movement, he affixed the “bracelet” around their oldest daughter’s middle, as if she really was part of Bucky’s arm, which delighted her to no end.

“Win and Ward,” Win bellowed from the cave opening, “three and four!”

“You’re ought of order,” Winnie complained, trying very hard to yank her father toward the opening. Bucky let her, shuffling over the floor with ease. He snatched up their travel basket on the way there. “Winnie and Daaaaaad, one!”

“RiRi, two,” Ri reported in. She had a tiny little basket that she’d woven herself, carried across one arm.

“Jaime, five,” the boy reported from his perch in Bucky’s hair. He’d managed to do something with it, so Bucky resembled some sort of spiny lionfish, little braids thrusting out in all directions.

“Peter, six,” Peter said, sulking, and Tony had to pick him up and let Peter curl his tail around Tony’s ear, which was not Tony’s favorite thing, but it beat being throttled by a discontent flounder any day.

“And that leaves me,” Tony said. “Bringing up the rear.”

“It’s a very nice rear,” Bucky pointed out. He stuck his head out of the cave, scouting the vicinity. “Going sand.” He warned both of the children clinging to him before he engaged his camouflage coloring. He hadn’t done that once, and they’d had a close call when Jaime was suddenly bright green against nothing at all, a perfect-looking snack for a wandering shark.

That particular shark had been very unhappy when Bucky appeared suddenly, wielding one of the man-thing weapons that he’d taken to carrying around.

Tony had discovered, much to his concern, that shark made for _very good_ eating. He tried not to mention it, because Bucky might take it into his thick, cephalopodian head to go hunting sharks, which wasn’t good for Tony’s peace of mind.

“Steve’s here,” Bucky reported, then suddenly he was darting back into the cave, yanking Tony back away from the opening. He was halfway through securing the rock that they used to block the entrance when Steve whistled for him. Steve had the most amazing voice, and by amazing, Tony was quite sure it was _terrible_ , _awful_ , and someone should be plucked off the evolutionary reef for it.

Steve sang like he thought he was a man-thing. But sometimes he whistled like a whale. A bloated, dying, deaf whale.

“C’mon out,” Steve said, clattering his claw against the rock. “Want you to meet my friend, Sam.”

“That is a _manta-mer_ ,” Bucky pointed out, pushing the rock more firmly into place. “He is not a filter feeder, I don’t care what lies he’s been spouting, I’ve seen those things eat.”

“Hey, man,” Sam said, huge flappy wings stirring up the ocean sand, “I don’t eat th’ friends of friends. ‘Sides, ain’t like an octomer’s diet is vegetarian or nothin’. I don’t eat things that talk. Mostly. I make an exception for dolphins, because man, they don’t _shut up_.”

“He’s kidding, you’re all perfectly safe.”

“I’ve lived in this ocean m’ whole life, Stevie, and noplace is perfectly safe,” Bucky said.

“Yeah, well, you’re with me,” Steve said.

It was different, Tony decided, since they had fry. A whole school of fry, and Ward’s rude commentary aside, Tony didn’t have any spares. But he also trusted Steve. He squeezed out between the crack and the boulder. He wasn’t as good at squeezing as Bucky was, but he could manage.

Certainly, he was a lot smaller than Sam, who was almost twice the size of Steve, and that wasn’t even including those giant, flapping wings that rippled and kept the mer moving. Sam drifted around in a little circle, sharklike in his inability to keep still.

“Well, no one’s going to mess with us,” Ward pointed out, looking up, and up, and more up. “Can I swim in your wake, Mr. Sam?”

Sam reached down and scooped up Ward, who was just tiny, cupped in his hands. “You can certainly ride in my wake.”

Which had the other fry clamouring for it, and they ended up piled on the manta-mer’s broad back. All except for Jaime, who refused, point blank, to give up on his efforts to turn Bucky’s hair into a coral reef, and Win, who stared longingly at his twin brother, but kept in the safety of Bucky’s arms. Win was a lot shyer than his brother.

“Well, let’s go visiting,” Tony said. “I want to see Rhodey and Pepper sometime before the next spawning season.”

***

Bucky spent a while with his lips tightly pressed together when they first arrived. He always managed to forget that seahorses generally picked their mates by how large they were -- maybe it was why Tony had left the first spawning ground without one. For which Bucky was very grateful. He’d have had no chance whatsoever against a seahorse mare. But he was quite a bit larger than Tony was, and therefore, attractive to his mate.

Pepper, on the other hand, Rhodey’s mare and mate, was _enormous_. Comparative to Tony, leastways; she was only the length of two of Bucky’s tentacles together at the widest point taller than her mate, but Rhodey was at least the same height greater than Tony.

Which made Tony look small and delicate, and still fiesty.

Seas and shells, but Bucky loved him.

Bucky rested against a thick boulder inside Rhodey’s spawning hut. Winnie was clinging to his stump, and sometimes climbing up his shoulder to put her finger where Jaime told her to. Waves only knew what the two of them had done to his hair. From the amused looks that Tony shot him from time to time he imagined it was a bit of a sight. Pepper was carefully not looking at him; probably because he looked ridiculous and she’d always been very polite. Rhodey and Tony were talking a fathom per heartbeat.

Bucky wondered if Pepper would have felt more comfortable with him if he was another seahorse, or perhaps if he was female. Bucky had to admit, it was an unconventional relationship. But Bucky wasn’t a typical octomer, either. He’d been badly hurt and in order to survive with several lacking limbs, he’d had to make friends.

Steve, at first, and then Tony, and then Tony’s friends, until Bucky was pretty gregarious. Most of his people were solitary, except for the few short years that females would raise their fry.

Bucky remembered his sisters, back from his own days as a spawnling. He hadn’t seen them since that first night when he slipped away from his mother and-- well, he was an octo-mer. He never went back. He sighed. Not that Becca would thank him, if he tried to find her, and it was a big damn ocean, where would he even look?

He cuddled Winnie until she squirmed to get away, and he wondered if his children would be more octomer or seahorse. The seahorses were a community; Tony maintained his old friendships and Rhodey even visited his parents.

There was something to be said for family.

RiRi and Kamala and Ward were having a three-way tug-of-war, and Ward was cheating, multiple limbs in play, but RiRi was stronger and struggled to pull the others over a line drawn in the sand in the corner where they were playing. Caro and Winnie were gossiping about some of Caro’s other friends, even as Winnie climbed all over her father like he was a reef. Peter was busy trying to climb the wall, using just his hands, instead of scooting along with his tail, moving the way seahorses did. He’d always been envious of his octo-siblings. There was only he and RiRi who took after Tony. The rest of them were Bucky and his ex-mate, Natasha’s direct spawn.

But it was okay. Bucky loved all his children--

Wait.

Where _was_ Win?

“Tony?”

“Yeah, starfish, are we boring you--”

“Where’s Win?”

There were moments of panic and fear in Bucky’s life that he would never forget; moments when Hydra had torn him open and left him bleeding, when Ten Rings had nearly murdered Bucky’s mate. Moments when he’d come close to being discovered by the man-things, or been unable to scrounge a meal.

He’d never known _anything_ like the fear of losing one of his children.

Win was an octomer, able to squish himself into a crack no wider than a handspan. Tony and Bucky, along with Pepper and Rhodey and Steve, lifted and poked, called and searched, every crack and crevice of Rhodey and Pepper’s home, and could not find him.

Bucky was beginning to think at least one of his hearts was going to break in despair when Tony finally thought to look outside the dwelling.

“Win!” Tony’s melodious seahorse voice cut through the water and waves.

“Daddy?”

Bucky slouched to the ocean floor in sudden relief. “Where in th’ seven seas have you been?”

“Makin’ friends with Mr. Sam,” Win reported from his perch on the manta-mer’s mantle. Sam hadn’t even tried to fit his massive bulk inside the cavern, preferring to swim laps around the dwelling and gather krill and other food.

Bucky’s first instinct -- and his second and third, as well -- were to snatch up his son and stick him in a basket for the rest of his natural life span. The fourth instinct, which was what he went with, was to pluck him down from Sam’s back and hug him. Tony wrapped himself around them both, holding on tight.

“Sorry,” Sam said. “I didn’t know he weren’t s’posed to be out.”

Win was a baby, they all were. Even for octo-mers, they were too young to be out on their own.

Bucky raised his chin to say so, rather pointedly, to Sam, and then thought better of it. “He’s a bit wee to be out without a guardian. So we’re very grateful that you were here, to keep an eye on ‘im.”

Sam grinned and ducked his chin. “They’re cute kids,” he said. “They’re welcome t’ come swim with me, whenever they want.”

“Thank you,” Tony said, and Bucky knew he was expressing his appreciation for more than the offer, but for keeping Win safe.

Because the ocean… was never a hundred percent safe.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's some more [lovely arts from Monobuu](http://monobuu.tumblr.com/post/173656574774/since-im-not-actually-sure-when-ill-be-able-to), who is absolutely my favorite person, I swear.

**Author's Note:**

> art by my amazing giftee -- [Monobuu](http://monobuu.tumblr.com/)


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